Page 55 of Safari Murder Party
Fletcher felt worse than she did after a brunch with bottomless mimosas.
She and Waylon cleared as much distance as they could, leaving the burning estate behind them in a titian blaze. Grass scratched at her bare legs as they ran. Images of the afternoon replayed over and over and over again in her head. Between the blood crusted on her knuckles and the stench of smoke on the wind, her stomach finally waved the white flag into the sagebrush.
Here, under the last drops of sun, while she puked her guts out to the soundtrack of the afternoon savanna with Waylon hovering nearby, she was resolutely certain this trip deserved the gold medal for All-Time Worst Company Retreat.
In the manor, fighting for her life, the panic had been staved off by all the sprinting and slicing and sword fighting. The safari seemed downright serene in comparison. But as the adrenaline faded, every horrifying reality sank in.
Fletcher uncapped a wine cellar Evian to splash her face and rinseout her mouth. Her body sagged against her bones, palms planted in the hard dirt while she willed the world to quit spinning.
“Come on, Wilderness Barbie, we can go—”
“Don’t,” Fletcher said. She couldn’t decide exactly what she didn’t want him to do. Come closer? Speak to her? Existing was pushing it.
“There’s a river down a quarter mile or so if you want to go get cleaned up, and we can set up camp for the night.”
The thought of washing at least three different people’s blood off her skin felt like a privilege too luxurious to entertain without visual proof of said river. Especially since there had been no shortage of bathtubs at the manor they’d been forced to evacuate.
“I don’t want to bathe in a river, Waylon.” Her fuse had been chipped and chipped and chipped away all day long. “I don’t want to sleep on the ground. I don’t want to have to wonder if you or Rick or Sheila are going to slit my throat in the middle of the night. Iwantedto curl up in the capybara room and fall asleep on one-thousand-thread-count sheets and wake up tomorrow morning to find out that this whole thing was just a jet lag–induced night terror. Iwantedthis trip to be normal, so I could network my way into a promotion, that way I could maybe actually be able to afford a place to live when I go back to the city. But I can’t. Because all of this is real, and the manor justcaught on fire.”
“At least no one’s chasing us.”
While it was true—Fletcher had briefly spotted the remaining members of the C-suite and Sales darting in opposite directions away from the estate—she wasn’t in the mood to hear it. Even after the certified shit show of an afternoon they’d had, Waylon managed to sound unaffected. One hand was shoved into his pants pocket, and the other wrapped around the strap of his camping bag. All his emotions zipped up nicely behind a Cool Guy Facade.
It spiked her blood pressure.Hespiked her blood pressure.
“Me,” Fletcher corrected. “Bertram was chasingme. Yet again, you get off scot-free because you’re Waylon Cartwright and you made it exceptionally clear you don’t want anything to do with this company.”
“Brian did try to strangle me.” Waylon speared onward, apparently content that Fletcher wasn’t going to pass out—or content to leave her there anyway.
Aggravated, she tailed him. “In a fit of passion! Bertram’s vendetta against me was totally premeditated. He thinks an ambitious woman who wants to climb the ranks is more dangerous than you, and you inherited the whole freaking island.”
“And its structures,” he said, bending back the grasses to carve a path forward. “Including the manor. So, when you think about it, I just took a major loss.”
“Oh, I’mso sorryyou’ll have to rebuild awingof themansionon yourprivate island. Thank god for generational wealth. I would have hated for you to face real hardships. You’re half the reason we’re in this mess anyway.”
“Am I, now?”
It was hard to look as mad as she felt while bobbling on unsteady heels, ankles like a newborn calf. “Yes. This morning, there were sixteen of us. Now, half those people are gone, all becauseyourdad got some evil, mutant bee in his bonnet thatRatatouille’d him into creating his own personalHunger Games.”
“It was probably a tracker jacker then, instead of a bee, huh?”
“What do you know aboutThe Hunger Games? You probably rooted for the Capitol!”
Waylon peeked over his shoulder, smirking even as Fletcher scowled.
“I’m serious, Waylon. I mean, this is—this is—”
Verbalizing it made it harder to breathe. Made it real. Nothing about Lydell felt like it should exist anywhere near reality—not the juxtaposition of the estate’s brocade curtains and grass cloth wallpapers, not the IRLZoo Tycoonexperience, and definitely not a truce with Waylon.
“A disaster,” Waylon said as the banks of the river came into view.
Serpentine blues etched into the otherwise neutral landscape. At this bend, the water was shallow and glistened beneath the late-day glow, but it wound into the jungle, widening and deepening as it went.
Fletcher kicked off her shoes, sludgy river mud squidging between her toes. She stomped for good measure. “Do you have any idea what this trip meant for me? I get four, maybe five, hours of sleep each night because there’s always insurance to file for the house in Amsterdam or emails to draft to theJet-SetterAsia team. My salary’s barely enough to keep my head above water, and what extra money I do have is spent on shitty twenty-eight-dollar Manhattans from your equally shitty bar just to pretend I have a social life. There is so much instant ramen in my body that if you cut me open, I’d bleed out Maruchan Roast Chicken flavor packets. And when I get back home—ifI get back home—there won’t be a home to go to. I’ll have to get a job at the department store it gets bulldozed into and sleep in the employee lounge on some horrible leather sofa.”
She couldn’t help it. She started pacing. Frustration bubbled out of her.
“I came here so that maybe, just maybe, I could have the chance to do what I love at the magazine of my dreams. It was supposed to be different. Fun. A chance to actually participate, instead of looking in from the outside. I thought I’d wake up this morning and eat so much smoked salmon I’d get mercury poisoning. I thought I’dsuntan and shmooze and sip my little drinks without worrying that assholes like you would judge me for having the same taste in drinks as a newly minted twenty-one-year-old fintech bro. Instead, I had to watchmy bossgeteaten by lionsand send everyone into a feral rampage.”
